A recent CTE Policy Watch Blog detailed the House Committee on Education and the Workforce's hearing on "Education Reforms: Exploring Teacher Quality Initiatives," held on July 27. This hearing examined state and local efforts to attract and retain highly effective teachers. Teacher retention has been a major problem in Career and Technical Education, especially in PA. We are seeing too many quality teachers leave the classroom within the first three years. This is often due to a lack of support and an extreme level of frustration. In our Teacher Leadership Network meetings in PA, we have been exploring ways to improve our teacher induction programs in order to assist career professionals transitioning into the field of education.

CTE: Education for a Strong Economy

This fact sheet, published by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium and the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), highlights the role CTE plays in resolving our nation’s economic and workforce issues.

Learn more about the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium

It has been a long-standing battle between those who value Career and Technical Education (CTE), and those who are misinformed about the advantages CTE provides for its graduates. For these reasons, many academic high schools are reluctant to send their students to the “tech school,” for fear of not being able to count those students as part of their college acceptance rates. What is not well-publicized is the fact that by not encouraging these students to attend CTE, the schools are essentially holding the students back from obtaining high-demand jobs in technical and manufacturing fields after graduation.

Published by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc), this brief update highlights the states’ progress in implementing programs of study (POS) within the Career Clusters framework, a key part of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Act of 2006.

Career Clusters and Programs of Study: State of the States (April 2011)

This report, published by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, provides an in-depth look at the role of Career and Technical Education in the 21st century.

Up to the Challenge: The Role of Career and Technical Education and 21st Century Skills in College and Career Readiness

I recently received a link to a slide show gallery from The Daily Beast, an aggregator news website affiliated with Newsweek. The title of this gallery was “20 Most Useless Degrees” and No. 1 was Journalism, No 4 was Advertising, No. 14 was Photography, and No. 16 was Art.  The gallery does not explain why they are the most useless degrees, but you can draw conclusions based on the statistics that were provided for each occupation.